IceStorm 98 Study

D. A. (Andy) Ling is Vice President and Chief Engineer of the Granite Power Corporation which is the electric power supplier in the Gananoque region starting from the eastern edge of Kingston (Kingston Mills). They utilize a number of their own hydro and thermal generation stations but also use Ontario Hydro power to supplement their grid.

The following notes are from an interview which was not taped.

The crises started Wednesday evening at about 8 pm when the North feeder line went out. By Thursday morning the rural feed line from Gan to Kingston had tripped. A.L. made telephone call late Thursday morning to the Environment Canada meteorologist phone service to inquire about the severity of the storm. They indicated that Gananoque was just at the edge of the storm and that more bad weather was coming.

Lines continued to go down in Gananoque on Thursday. At about 8 or 9 pm the whole town went down when the feed from Ontario Hydro was lost. By late evening the crews were exhausted and there was nothing left to do - everyone went home to rest for the next day.

On Friday morning, using their own generators [remote hydro plants and thermal generating plant] power was being partially restored to some areas. However, since there was not enough power for everyone, they hooked up the downtown feeders to power the stores and essential services.

Gradually they picked up the North ward and part of the South ward. The decision was made to implement a rotating blackout scheme whereby the shops, would have power only during daytime to offer much needed supplies to people while the residential areas would have power only at night in order to power furnaces to warm up homes and water pumps. With this system about 60% of the town had power for approx. 8 hour shifts.

All industries were deemed non-essential and not offered power. Other power priorities were the emergency shelter at the Kinsmen Hall, the fire department and the retirement home.

On Friday A.L tried to call for extra help from outside the area but everyone had already been picked up by PUC (the Kingston utilities company.) He spoke PUC occasionally since they had common materials suppliers who were making almost daily emergency shipments to Kingston, where GLP picked up their shipments. Since everyone was short of various materials such as connectors, the shipments were often split up on the basis of who needed what the most.

By Friday or Saturday no cellular or land-line phones were operating and their own radio phone system was severely limited since three towers were damaged or down. They rigged up a makeshift antenna on the roof of the main office in order to have some communications capacity.

By Saturday or Sunday, five extra contractor crews arrived from Belleville, Madoc, Peterborough and two from Toronto [some municipalities near the storm area held off sending help to other areas in case they too would suffer storm damage.

Good communications at all times with crews. Safety procedures always followed. [Only one elec. worker accident in whole region?]

What we did right:

• Calling in outside help.
• Providing good accommodation and food for workers
• Safety and information talks for visiting workers to give local system overview.
• Were already using flashlights which recharge in the trucks via cigarette lighter - this was a great help.
• All visiting crews received adequate supervision and materials to stay productive at all times.
• Used qualified [electricians] vol. workers to do rough wiring set ups between building and pole which could then be connected quickly by their own workers/linemen.
• Went street by street rather than responding to each call.

Contact with Ontario Hydro was very good. They have some joint poles and it soon made sense to join forces and sweep through an area. Worked all day Saturday and Sunday to complete majority of problems in town. Main feed back on from OH on Sunday so there was no longer need to rotate power outages. Most of town had power Sunday night or Monday morning, with the exception of one ward which had a lot of damage. On Tuesday the last part of the grid was turned on. After Gananoque was on, the crews started on the Kingston rural line.

Experienced some confusion with OH inspections regarding home stack repairs. Used a pre-authorized electricians list to allow those electricians to complete hook-ups without usual OH paper work/inspection [to be done later] Had to increase the number of qualified electricians on the list.

Military stopped by to help -offered 30 guys from Communications and some students with 4 wheel drive and bucket vehicles. Assigned supervisor from thermal plant to coordinate them. Military helped for about one week on rural lines.

By Wednesday, January 14, three or four crews were on rural duty. By Friday the lines which run off the main highway # 2 feeder were picked up.

Money was not a concern but there was some stress from the office which wanted an accounting of materials being used on each site. This seemed to be an impractical expectation.

The biggest problems:

• The on-going damage meant having to go back and redo areas.
• Military phone numbers difficult to find.
• Never heard from EMO. They should have contacted every utility company [listed in MEA book] and said “here we are, what do you need”.
• EMO useless, never had contact, still don’t know who to call.
• The heroes were the materials suppliers [ poles, connectors etc.]
• Talk to Belleville pole yard - Stella-Jones Company, Ron Smith, Trenton [613] 392-3231 or 1-800-267-8333 toll free.
• Also Grafton Utility Supply, Reg or Andy, Colborne 1-905-355-2474

Although they made periodic reports to CKLC, customer communications about what was going on could be improved.

Stress was a potential concern and workers had to limit their hours of work.

Who else to talk to: Gary Clark regarding trees at Gananoque Board of Works.